Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is my favourite game of 2017 (minor spoilers)

From a gamer's perspective, 2017 has been a bit crazy. Mass Effect: Andromeda was so hilariously bad, my lengthy rant about it actually lead to my first real job in the gaming industry. Let's not even get into lootboxes or Visceral Games being shut down. The PC version of this year's Call of Duty was surprisingly good for about a week and is now so utterly infested with cheaters, there's a fair chance you'll end up in a hacked lobby, which will mess with your stats and unlocks much like back in Modern Warfare 2. What fun!

But there has also been some good stuff with all the crap! The good folks at Larian have created an instant classic and one of the best RPGs ever made with Divinity: Original Sin 2. The new Assassin's Creed turned out to be decent, despite fucking loot boxes. Fans of Resident Evil got an incredible new game, Cuphead is a ridiculously impressive indie gem and for a brief moment, Sonic was awesome again, thanks to Sonic Mania. Night in the Woods quickly became one of my favourite games of all time - and it's getting a director's cut this month! There are the tweaked and upgraded new Pokémon games on the 3DS and there's even a portable version of RPG maker on there now!

I'm making a game about my cat.

Then there's Nintendo's Switch and the sudden shift from 'but there are only two games' to 'when am I supposed to fucking play all this'. With Mario and Zelda they've already got two very strong game of the year contenders, but the one title I'm ejoying even more than any other game this year is Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Now, I'm not saying it's 'better' than Breath of the Wild or whatever game you feel is the best one you've played all year. But it's the one I've been enjoying more than everything else I've played in 2017.

I never played any other title in the Xeno series. I'm also not massively keen on anime, apart from stuff everyone should be required to watch by law. You know, Ghost in the Shell, most of the stuff by Studio Ghibli, that sort of thing. But there's something about Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which immediately sucked me right in. You see this guy in a diving suit jumping into a sea of clouds to harvest some sunken goods. There are some onscreen credits, the presentation is quite impressive and Claire thought I was watching a movie. The guy comes back up with his loot on a crane and walks around on what seems to be a small boat or a tiny island or some sort of platform. A voice starts speaking to the treasure hunter, which is instantly recognizable as the voice of Andre the blacksmith from Dark Souls, so that's always a plus. You don't actually know where that voice is coming from, until...

Whoa!

Turns out the little "island" is alive. It's a so-called titan, a living, breathing being. Turns out the world was destroyed, everything is covered by this ocean of clouds and what's left of the people happens to live atop these giant titans. But the titans are dying, people are running out of space to live and war seems inevitable. So yeah, once again the world is fucked, folks scavenge in order to get by and there's this one optimistic guy, who wants to find a better place so everyone can live in peace. And since we're already ticking anime and JRPG checkboxes, the following clichés are also present:

- The main character is a young male
- He wields a sword
- He's got no parents
- He makes questionable fashion choices
- Bunch of powerful badass characters show you the ropes as you fight alongside them
- Badass characters turn out to be simply ass characters
- Female protagonist has disproportionally large tits
- Somebody creates a powerful artificial life form to help the heroes in battle
- The artificial life form looks like a very young lady about to buy hygiene products for girls for the first time in her life
- Female protagonist to male protagonist: "Put your hand on my chest!" She is clearly referring to a cameo she's wearing.
- "What do you mean we make a nice couple? W-we're just friends!"
- "It's beautiful because you made it. Uh... n-no, I didn't mean it like that!"
- Main character to female character: "You're heavy!" Entire world: "GASP!"
- "Run! Save yourselves, while I end my life as a heroic and slightly pointless sacrifice!"
- "We will defeat our enemies with the power of friendship!"
- Character, who switches between two personas, which are polar opposites in personality and appearance
- The obligatory unwinnable boss fight
- "I could tell you everything about who I am, who the bad guys are and why they want us all dead, but I'm not ready to open up right now." - "Oh, that's okay, no worries."
- "You should be obedient and dress in a maid outfit if you want to win a guy over."
- Annoying unskippable midboss nobody takes seriously
- Annoying unskippable midboss is actually kind of a good guy
- Cat people
- Talking tiger
- Super annoying species of furry sidekick guys with what's supposed to be an endearing speech impediment
- Sudden death by comically oversized sword stabbed right through the heart. From behind. By a traitor.

The game takes some 80 hours to complete and I'm not quite there yet, so I haven't seen all the clichés yet. I'm still expecting somebody to call a female character flat-chested and I'm still waiting to find out which character is always hungry and eats like a pig. At some point it'll probably turn out that the main character's father, grandfather or some ancestor was that legendary hero who did the thing. This is pure speculation and not a spoiler at this point, but so far, they've been knocking out the obvious ones fairly consistently.

It's anime, alright.

Thing is, these clichés don't really bother me all that much. If they did, then I'd also have to start hating on all the orcs and elves and 'it's basically the middle ages, but with fireballs' stuff in every western RPG and fantasy tale. I'm okay with it and I'm aware that being able to at least tolerate all these overused bits is a requirement if you want to enjoy Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

One of the reasons why it all works so well, even though I've seen much of it a million times before in so many other games and movies is the voice acting. Some of the voices sound so hilariously off and really, seriously surprising, because most of the English voice actors are Brits. And they don't speak proper Oxford English - they have some of the thickest accents I've ever heard in a JRPG! That cat lady in the yellow suit you can see in the screenshot up there? She's fucking Scottish! Rex, the game's main protagonist, looks like (and is constantly referred to as) a little kid, yet he sounds like a grown man with a thick regional accent, which I cannot quite place, because I'm from Germany.

I've never seen such a visually stunning game on a handheld device.

The English voices are a bit Marmite, of course. I absolutely love them, because the vast majority of actors do a fantastic job, the occasional terrible, cringey character aside. These voices are full of personality, they give all the heroes and villains character and I find them pleasantly refreshing. There's a fair share of people who absolutely hate them and then there are the usual pretentious cunts, who watch and play absolutely everything in Japanese and spend most of their time reading subtitles, because they don't understand anything beyond 'arigatou'. I find most characters really likable, while the villains are fun to hate. And that helps with the immersion.

There's also the stunningly beautiful game world, which is brimming with life and detail. The first large titan you get to explore has this vast, seemingly endless ocean of grass swaying in the wind. There are absolutely gigantic trees, tall mountains, countless hidden passages, caves and monster lairs for you to uncover. They contain valuable treasure, tough unique monsters and all the shit you want to be rewarded with for exploration. Perhaps even more importantly, though - the world is alive! Strange alien creatures, which vaguely resemble giraffes are eating the leaves off the trees. A bunch of critters which look like zebras, hippos, even the odd triceratops, lead their young to a watering hole, where they all gather to drink. A pack of scary maned lions have caught one of the 'hippos' and they're now enjoying a massive dinner. It's crazy to see so much going on all at once, given the somewhat limited hardware.

And did I mention you get to ride the goddamn tiger?

The whole experience is supported by this grandiose orchestral soundtrack, which flat-out refuses to be 'background music'. It's loud, it's omnipresent and it's absolutely in your face - and I'm okay with it, because the soundtrack is consistently fantastic. I find it hard to pick out a favourite tune, because there are so many great tracks here. Add to that an insane amount of fully voice-acted cutscenes full of 'I can't believe this just fucking happened' moments and you get a massively enjoyable JRPG experience, clichés or not.

Of course it isn't all just roaming animals and cutscenes. You'll actually have to play the game, which can feel a lot like an offline MMORPG. For instance, there's your fair share of side missions, which are usually boring fetch quests. Some guy was supposed to gather some resources but never came back, so now you have to find the guy, rescue him from some monsters, then harvest the resources in his stead, because he got injured or some shit. That sort of thing isn't particularly thrilling, but helping out raises your reputation with the locals, which in turn grants you better prices with merchants. Shops may offer you cool new stuff you couldn't buy before. That sort of thing. So while a fetch quest is still a fetch quest, at least there's usually some good reward waiting for you at the end.

Combat has a certain MMO feel to it, as well.

Then there's combat, which starts off deceptively slow and simple. You have an auto attack and a bunch of 'weapon arts', which deal a bit of extra damage or even do cool stuff like cause the enemy to drop a potion. Over time you'll be charging an extra meaty special attack you can fire off for a bit of extra damage. So far, so easy.
But as you progress through the game you eventually get to chain up your weapon arts to do all sort of crazy shit like stagger an opponent, then trip them, fling them into the air and smash them back to the ground. Special attacks can be chained together as well, resulting in devastating combos, which can take down the meatiest monsters in no time.

Each character gets their weapon arts and special attacks from so-called blades, which serve as the weapons they wield (swords, axes, spears, you name it), but also manifest themselves as battle pets of sorts. So your sword isn't just an inanimate object, but it also manifests itself as some sexy anime chick or a bear or some scary-looking alien thing and what have you. To make matters more complex, each of these blades come in different elemental flavours (fire, ice, you get the idea) and they're divided into attack, tank and healer blades.

Most bosses get blades, too!

You can put three of the playable characters in your active party at any time. These characters each get to wield three different blades at a time. It's possible to switch between these three blades in a fight, should you want to sacrifice some damage and use an extra tank blade or maybe retire your healer blade for an extra attacker to dish out some more pain. Combining special attacks of blades with different elements results in different combos. Follow your earth blade's special attack with a fire attack and you'll create a volcano. Perform a fire combo with a water blade to create a steam bomb.

You can only control one character at a time, while the other two are handled by the AI, but they're usually a lot more competent than the random cunts you get to play with in an MMO. Your team will constantly set up starters for chain attacks and they'll finish them if you follow up with the right weapon art. Characters with tanky blades will keep the aggro from the squishy healers, who will run around the battlefield reviving fallen comrades and collecting healing potions if the group is hurt. It's less WoW and more Final Fantasy XI/XIV, so it takes a while to master all the details and strategies, but it feels incredibly rewarding when you do.

Not gonna fight this guy, though. What is it with Nintendo and T-Rexes these days?

Still, I love to bitch about stuff and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 offers some opportunity on that front, as well. First of all, fucking awful directions. Some sidequests require you to go to the most awfully hidden, difficult to reach places right in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. If you didn't memorize the directions when the quest NPC gave them to you, good luck trying to find the place using only a little navigational compass and a vague, crappy description in your quest log. Sure, the game absolutely wants you to explore the absolute fuck out of it, but for god's sake! Running around in circles like a complete idiot whilst getting skullfucked by a bunch of stupidly powerful boss monsters, who can and will repeatedly onehit you isn't fun!

And the game is just a little too complicated for its own good. Found a new blade? Well, let's release it and see if you've got a cool rare one or just another one of the boring generic standard ones. Oh, you're out of space? Better get rid of some of your blades, who will make you feel like shit when you do. "Aww... sniff... that's a real shame." "I guess I wasn't strong enough, huh..." "I will miss you!" Gee, thanks! Force me to get rid of these guys in order to hatch new ones, then make me feel terrible about it, why don't you! Blades all want to be geared up and upgraded, some of their special abilities can only be unlocked and enhanced via strangely convoluted methods (drink four cups of coffee, play the harmonica twice, buy three steaks - I wish I was making this up, but I'm not). And then there's this one special blade, who can only be upgraded via some weird 8bit minigame, which is fun, but you'd better kiss all your free time goodbye if you plan on going down that route. It's all a bit overwhelming.

Sigh.

You can also send inactive blades on mercenary missions, cook a bunch of food, because of course you can and then there are certain areas with hidden treasure or quest rewards, which can only be reached during certain times of day or when the cloud tide is particularly high or low. It's an RPG and these dozens upon dozens of hours you'll be spending to complete it all have to be filled with something.

I'm not saying it's all tedious busywork (apart from the boring fetch-quests with shitty directions), but if you're expecting to just hop in for 20 minutes at a time, turn off your brain and enjoy a bite-sized chunk of videogame entertainment, then this isn't the game you're looking for. However, if you're looking for a moving, exciting story full of lovable characters with goofy accents, as well as a surprisingly deep and rewarding combat system, and gorgeous giant open world for you to explore, then Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is well worth your time. And the soundtrack is so insanely good, I've been playing it up and down all day when I didn't have the time to actually play the game. This year's Mario and Zelda may be enjoyable for everyone, including your little sister, your grandmother and your dog, but if you're willing to get into its mechanics, then Xenoblade Chronicles 2 might feel even more rewarding. It sure does to me.